Thief of the Ancients Read online

  She sat back, surprised and confused. Not only because of the incongruous presence of the rib but the fact that metal would not have cracked beneath her the way she had felt the ground do. It was doubly odd. Checking the tightness of the rope, she inched her way up the rib until she overlooked the exact point where she had fallen, and again swept her hand back and forth. This time the topsoil offered absolutely no resistance at all, sliding away and trickling down to form a heap at the base of the hill. What lay beneath made her breath catch – a shiny, dark material as smooth as glass other than where hairline fractures marred it, fresh fractures that wouldn’t be there except for her own ignominious crash-landing. She stroked the surface with her palm, realising two things. The material itself wasn’t dark, it just had darkness beneath it. And it wasn’t glass – it was crystal.

  Kali stood, puzzling over what she’d found when she heard a shifting above her, and suddenly the trickle of soil about her feet became a small flood. She looked up and saw that where she’d wiped away the topsoil she had, in turn, disturbed the soil above it, and it, too, had begun to slip towards her. And with it gone, everything above had become unstable.

  Horse brayed, hung his head and looked at her with chastising eyes. She’d caused a landslide. The entire bloody hill was coming down.

  “Ohhh, bugger!” Kali said.

  She staggered back along the metal, trying to get out of the way as the mass of soil and roots came crashing past her to the forest floor, almost dragging her off her feet and choking her in a dense, fibrous fog. She waded against the thick tide for what seemed like an eternity, and when, finally, it ceased, and its cloud had dispersed, found herself staring up at what remained.

  Her mouth dropped open.

  The hill hadn’t collapsed, only the detritus with which nature had hidden what it really was over the course of long, long years. And now, rising away from her and sweeping off to her left and right, was a dome.

  A vast, ornately ribbed, crystal dome.

  Kali’s heart thudded. Steaming pits of Kerberos, she had never seen anything like this!

  There was no question about what to do next. She had to find out what was inside. Unlacing a pouch on her toolbelt, Kali dug through various odds and ends, took out a small hammer and clambered back up the rib to where she had knelt earlier, intending to tap the fractured crystal to create an exploratory hole. But as she raised the hammer to strike she felt tugs on the rope about her waist, minor at first but then hard enough to actually jerk her off balance. Unusually for Horse, it seemed he was getting skittish. But turning to see what the matter was, Kali realised Horse was more than skittish, he was clopping about in considerable agitation.

  She looked past him and saw why. Something was coming at them out of the trees – fast. They must have worked up some courage because their friends were back with a vengeance.

  There was no time to act, no time to hide, no time to dodge – Kali didn’t even have time to brace herself. The chitinous things came swooping around Horse and straight at her, folding and flapping and then slamming into her with a speed that knocked the wind from her lungs. Their intent was presumably to pin her to the ground where they could rip her apart but, of course, there was no ground and, with a sound like a shocked and sibilant hiss, Kali and her three assailants crashed into and through the surface of the dome.

  All four plummeted into blackness – Kali backwards with the things clinging on to her front – falling helplessly amidst countless shards of the partly shattered dome. Under different circumstances Kali might have found the susurrating crystal rain surrounding her mesmerising, but she was too busy bracing herself to hit the ground beneath the dome to pay much attention. No impact came, however, and she realised the dome must enclose something more than the forest floor itself – but what? For a moment she forgot the rope, imagined herself plunging ever downwards into some unknown abyss, but then the rope reached maximum length and she came to a halt with a whiplash jerk that made her internal organs collide and winded her worse than the folding bastards had moments before. Those same things, which until that moment still clung tenaciously to her front, triangular maws trying to snap at her face, were wrenched from her and tumbled away screeching, down and down into the dark. Seconds passed and then she heard the sound of three impacts from somewhere far below.

  Kali groaned and hung where she’d halted, limp as a discarded doll, rotating slightly, the rope creaking above her in the silence that followed the fall. A dot in darkness, her head flopped backwards, she stared down into a vast and circular subterranean chamber lit vaguely by the half-light penetrating the broken dome. Whatever the place was, it seemed deserted and utterly still – the only movement motes agitated by her intrusion bouncing in the air – and the centre of it was dominated by a strange, shadowy mass that the whole structure seemed to have been built around. Also circular and broad at the base, but tapering gradually with greater and greater height, it rose towards her from the chamber floor like some huge ant hill – a hill within a hill – ever upwards, almost as far as the lip of the dome itself. It was a dizzying sight, especially when viewed upside down, and while Kali hadn’t the faintest idea what it was, she did know she wanted a closer look.

  The air in the chamber – old air, the kind she liked – acted on her like smelling salts and she snapped to, realising she had to find a way down from where she hung. But that was going to be easier said than done. Even if she whistled Horse to the edge of the dome, the rope on which she dangled was nowhere near long enough to reach the top of the mass, let alone the chamber floor, and unless she was going to be happy taking home memories of a bird’s eye view of... wherever she was, she was going to have to find another way to descend. She pulled herself upright and turned on the rope, eyeing her surroundings, and had gone almost full circle before her gaze lit upon what looked like a platform, metal and ornately railed, running like a stretched-out horseshoe along the curving upper chamber wall. Some fifty feet away and below her, it would do as a start. It looked like one hells of a jump, however, and in taking it Kali knew she’d be committing herself to a descent with no return, because there was no way she’d be able to reach the rope again.

  But she hadn’t come all this way for nothing, and as Horse was probably getting a little disgruntled holding her dead weight, why not do him a favour and lighten his load? Besides, whoever had built this place must have built it with a front door, and in her experience of these old sites front doors were always easier to find from the inside than from the out.

  Decided, Kali detached the rope from her belt and began to swing back and forth, building up an arc of momentum that would allow her to make the jump. She continued to swing until she had reached her desired speed and apex, and then with a determined cry let go of the rope. She flew, arcing through the air and then dropping, and landed hard on the platform, rolling to lessen her impact. Lessened or not, there was an eruption of dust and a loud metallic clang that echoed around the ancient chamber, quieting only after Kali thought she might go deaf. She very much doubted anyone was home but, if they were, they now sure as hells knew she’d come to visit.

  All remained still and Kali stood, cautiously at first, but then, realising what she stood upon, throwing caution to the wind and instead grabbing the ornate railing to stare down, amazed. Still high above the chamber floor, the platform was clearly built for observation, and what it observed was the strange mass that dominated the place – the hill within a hill. Only it was no hill, she could see now, but a huge and vertiginous, winding metal stairway.

  Kali swallowed because it really couldn’t be anything else.

  She was looking at the Spiral of Kos.

  It was as incredible as it was mystifying. Overlooking its summit – still impossible to reach from where she stood – the dizzying structure was constructed in the same ornate fashion as the railing on which she leant, the steps of the stairway itself spiralling up inside a superstructure composed of flowing and curving ironwork t
he likes and artistry of which she had never seen. What drew her attention more than anything, however, was where the stairway led. Because there, at its top, completely isolated from the rest of the chamber, was another railed platform, and on it a large metal plinth.

  And resting on the plinth was a giant key.

  A key! Oh, she loved keys. Kali had no idea why it was there, where it had come from or what it unlocked, but she was certain of one thing – she wasn’t leaving until she had it in her hands.

  She turned, meaning to find a way off the platform and down to the first of those stairs, but as she did she caught a hint of movement from the Spiral itself. She turned back and squinted. Her eyes more adapted to the gloom, she noticed for the first time that the superstructure had apparently once housed some kind of hanging garden, for the dry and neglected remains of plants – thick tendrils and a number of presumably once-corpulent pods – still draped it now. That explained things. Perhaps one of those had shifted slightly in a draught from above – or then again, perhaps it had been nothing. A trick of the light.

  Kali moved off the rail, searching for the way down that had to be there. Oddly, though, she found no connecting walkways, no ladders, no obvious way off the platform at all other than a small gate that led to... well, she wasn’t sure what it led to. But as she walked closer, she felt a glimmer of recognition. The gate led to a cage, large enough that she could, if she so wished, step inside and which had a single entrance-cum-exit. Though it was different in many respects – more ornate, more complex, more mechanical-looking – it was clearly a version of the devices in use in the more industrialised areas of Vos – hoists and pulleys that had once lifted warehouse materials but now lifted men. Was that what this was, then? A... lift that could transport her off this platform? If so, where was the rope or chain suspending it? Curious, she leant around the edge of the cage, examining it more closely, and saw that though there was nothing to suspend it from above, the rear of the cage was secured to a thick metal arm that rested in the upper of two wide recesses in the chamber wall, recesses that swept away and down the wall in a reverse spiral to that of the Spiral itself, vanishing into the shadows below.

  It had to be the way down. But after ages of disuse, could she trust it? Would the thing even work?

  There was only one way to find out. Kali opened the gate and stepped warily into the cage, feeling for any kind of shift beneath her feet, all too aware that under the suspended floor there was nothing but a long, long drop. But she found it solid enough and so turned and closed the gate.

  Kali waited. Nothing happened.

  She waited more, and still nothing, and she frowned. Then she spotted a dust-shrouded lever on the wall of the cage next to where she had entered. Some kind of switch? Swallowing, she laid her hand on the lever and pulled it down. There was an empty clank.

  Again, nothing happened – for a moment. Then, from somewhere inside the walls of the vast chamber, machinery that Kali knew to be older than her civilisation groaned as it stirred into life, filling the place with a bass cacophony as if it were haunted suddenly by its builders’ ghosts. The noise resounded around the chamber, growing in volume until Kali felt the walls themselves rumble, and then silence descended abruptly and unexpectedly once more. Dammit, Kali thought.

  And then the cage lurched.

  Nothing could have prepared her for what happened next, and for a few exhilarating seconds she knew fully why she pursued the things she did. This was Old Race technology she was using, the first living being to have done so in perhaps a thousand years or more, and it was working.

  Oh gods, was it working!

  Kali laughed out loud.

  The cage in which she stood released itself from the platform and swept majestically down along the chamber wall as if it floated freely in the air, the movements of the mechanisms that propelled it barely discernible at all. The passage down the spiralling recess afforded her a constantly rotating view of the Spiral of Kos, travelling so smoothly she could have been flying around it. Down and down and round and round she went, ducking involuntarily as, at what she guessed must have been the halfway point, a vast counterweight swept up the lower recess and beneath the cage with a heavy whooooshh that seemed to take the air away.

  Kali watched the counterweight rise away and whooped, the magnitude of what was happening – what she’d found – hitting home. Her biggest find yet, all of this was hers to explore, and hers alone, the first person to tread within these walls since its Old Race occupants had gone. All of this – and that mysterious key.

  Gods!

  She looked down, almost clapping in anticipation of the cage berthing into a lower platform, and then she saw the light.

  Her heart thudded.

  It was hardly anything, a flare of whiteness perhaps two hundred feet below, but it was what the flare illuminated that was important.

  People.

  There were people below.

  It couldn’t be.

  Kali stared at the shadowed figures, unable to distinguish who or what they were, only that a small group were crossing the chamber floor towards the base of the Spiral of Kos, their way lit by the raised hand of one of them. A glowing hand. Were they Old Race? Was it possible that some of them were still alive? Was it possible she was looking down at the builders? It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t.

  One thing was clear. The cage in which she stood was going to deliver her right into their midst. And she couldn’t chance that, having no idea if they were friend or foe.

  Kali did the only thing she could. She rammed the lever back into its original position and, with a protesting groan, the cage lurched to a sudden halt, throwing her hard against its side. The groan caused the figures below to look up, and Kali threw herself to the cage floor, crawled to its edge and peered down, relieved as she saw them turn away. She’d been lucky – it seemed the figures had dismissed the noise as unexplained.

  Nevertheless, she was too exposed where she was. All it would take to reveal her presence above them was another curious glance at the lift, a whim. She had to get out of there and down – and quickly. Keeping her eyes on the unknown group, she crouched and then swung herself quietly out of the front of the cage, twisting so that she could grab onto its side, and from there swung herself onto the metal arm on which it rode. Then she worked her way into the recess, wide and deep enough to accommodate her crouching form. Using it to get down would still leave her exposed but if she kept in its shadows, and her luck held, she would make it unseen.

  She began to inch her way down towards the chamber floor. She had perhaps a hundred, a hundred and thirty feet to go.

  And it was then that the vision hit her.

  Searing agony cut through her mind, as if someone had embedded an axe in her forehead, and suddenly her world was yellow and red and white, everything the colour of raging fire. What had been a shadowy, abandoned chamber a moment before was now consumed by a blaze apocalyptic in intensity, the Spiral of Kos being destroyed in a conflagration beyond imagining. Things lashed and writhed within the flames – strange things that she had no time to identify before agonised screams swept them away. For a second she was outside the dome, staring as a pillar of fire rose high above the darkness of the Sardenne, and then she was back once more, in the fire’s raging heart, in its midst. It couldn’t be real but it was. She didn’t just see it, she could feel it, the heat from the fire strong enough to sear and bubble her skin and to blind her with its bright, bright heat. What the hells am I seeing? she wondered. What the hells am I feeling?

  Instinctively she flailed against it, and in that second realised where she was. Where she really was.

  But it was too late. Her flailing had taken her too far towards the edge of the recess, beyond balance.

  She tumbled out, and fell.

  And when she landed, the fire faded to blackness.

  And, as shadows loomed over her, so, too, did she.

  CHAPTER TWO

  KALI FELT
SOMETHING thudding again and again into her side and, with slowly growing awareness and annoyance, realised that it was a boot. Her eyes snapped open just in time to see the offending article coming at her again, and she instinctively grabbed and twisted it, flipping its wearer heel-over-head to the accompaniment of a startled cry.

  “Don’t do that!” she growled, without even thinking who it was she might be talking to.

  Great, she thought, reprimanding herself. Possible first contact with an Old Race and what does she do? Fling one of them on its arse.

  She sat quickly up, bruised, throbbing and disorientated, and looked around. There was no more fire – no more vision – but neither any time to think about where it had come from or where it had gone as the wearer of the boot, a cloaked and hooded figure, had also risen and, snarling, loomed over her again, boot swinging back for another strike.

  Kali was about to kick his legs from under him and punch his lights out when a hand moved across the figure’s chest and pushed him back to where others stood silently looking down at her.

  “Enough, brother,” a gruff voice said. “Do you not see that our visitor from on high is awake?”

  “My apologies... brother.”

  The speaker, becloaked and hooded like the rest, knelt by Kali, sighing as if somehow inconvenienced by her presence. The man was short, more accurately squat, and thickly muscled, his powerful bulk evident even beneath the loose folds of his cloak. Pulling back his hood he revealed a mane of grey hair flaring back from a face that was gnarled and scarred, inset with the coldest grey-tinted eyes she had ever seen. Whoever he was, Kali thought, if he didn’t have some Old Race blood in him – and she knew which Old Race – then her name was Fundinblundin Hammerhead.